You have to see, ‘what feeds my ego?’ You have to fight against that. ‘Laziness feeds my ego. Doing whatever I want feeds my ego. Hanging out with the people that they are not reminding me about my spirit, about my Allah and my Prophet, twenty four hours I’m spending time with them,’ that feeds your ego. Then you are going to understand. You see how much thinking, how much homework you have to do? This is Jihad ul-Akbar, this is the biggest, the greatest Jihad, because it is fighting against to your ego. Then you are going to see, ‘what starves my ego?’ What starves it? You are out there, you are in the dunya, you are saying ‘what starves my ego? What is it my ego hates doing? My ego loves to do what?’ do the opposite. ‘My ego just likes to sleep twenty four hours.’ Do the opposite. ‘My ego likes to be on that internet, just nonsense, going on and on and I can’t stop myself.’ Do the opposite. Once you do the opposite, then you are nourishing yourself. Then you are going to look, step by step, ‘who are the people around me? Are they feeding my ego or are they feeding my spirit?’ They are feeding my ego. Stay away from them a little bit.

No one in reality, on the Day of Judgment, they can say to Allah ‘You left me alone.’ No one. ‘You didn’t send a Prophet to me, You didn’t send a saint to me, You didn’t send a Saliheen to me,’ no one can say ‘You left me alone.’ No one can say ‘sheytan is to blame.’ No one can say that, because at the very least, Allah has given us aql. Intelligence, and that intelligence, in Tarikat you are supposed to use that intelligence. It’s not magic. When you use that intelligence then your faith, your modesty comes and the Power of Allah comes with you. When you don’t use that intelligence, when you are just dependent on miracles, you say ‘you know, I tried everything,’ which you didn’t try, ‘just give me a doa that I can make, or let me give you a couple hundred dollars, you make a doa for me,’ and just, everything is going to turn just like that. It never has happened like that, it will never be like that. Someone who promises you that is like you’re going to a drug dealer and they are giving, you give them something, you be happy for a while, then you’re hooked. But you go down after that, and then continuously, you are going to continue, do you understand?

So, well, (to a Murid) after how many years, five years? Five years, by hook or by crook, you got here. Now, can you tell me that it was so impossible that ‘definitely I have to wait another five years to come here,’ can you say that? No. You cannot. No one in their right mind, which in reality Allah has put that intelligence in us, no one with a little bit of humanity can say, after they commit a wrong action to say ‘I feel good after that wrong action, there is nothing there that is wrong and there is no measure of guilt in that. Even a person who drinks, an unbeliever who drinks too much, he will wake up. Allah has given that one a headache to wake up and to do what? What does he do the next day? He regrets. And regret it is a very important part of tauba. He says ‘what did I do? I shouldn’t have done that.’ That in itself is a mercy, that you are not saying ‘I had a great night,’ you regret. Allah has put that. Whatever wrong that we are doing, Allah has put that regret. ‘I shouldn’t have.’ And that regret is very important in tauba, in cleaning yourself, because if you don’t have that regret, then you are challenging Allah. That time, your faith is gone and your humanity is also gone. That time you don’t see, there is no difference between right and wrong then. ‘Everything is just pleasing me.’

So, you cannot say now, ‘yeah, definitely, it was so difficult, I have to wait another five years to come,’ because everyone, when they are doing something good, you know it is good. When you do something bad, you know that it is bad. And usually when it takes you a long time to do something good, you sit and you say ‘what was all this fuss about before that it’s difficult for me to do this? I’m doing it right now. It’s so nice. It is so easy.’ Of course, after that sheytan plays tricks on you, your ego will put certain saf in front of you and you find it more difficult to do it, then next time you can do it, and it goes around and around until you decide to break through. Like what Sheykh Effendi and Sheykh Mevlana are saying, you have to fight against your ego. The first time you’re fighting against your ego, it’s going to be very difficult.

So many people they don’t understand, what is it? We had a question before, somebody asked ‘what is the ego?’ you cannot now look at the person and say ‘what, you don’t understand what the ego is?’ No, because we didn’t understand when we first came here, or we are confused. ‘What is the ego? What is it?’ and now, it is very clear to us. First time you try to fight against the ego, it is like the rocket that is taking off. You have to use so much force, so much energy just to fight against the gravity, to take off, correct? You’re not going anywhere you’re just fighting to take off like this, so much energy, so much energy, so much fighting you have to do, but after a certain distance, it gets easier. After a certain distance, you can even turn off that engine, because now another kind of gravity is pulling you. And when you come to that part there, you have to make a decision, certain things you have to leave behind, you know, just like that rocket, certain things you have to leave behind? Usually, most things you have to leave behind that you thought were very important in your life. Then you just take what is the most important and that will see you through. You start sailing. You start flying, going up.

These are the steps that you have to take. But you cannot say ‘I enter into Tarikat, oh, I’m just going to turn off and I’m going to sail,’ no, it doesn’t happen like that. That means you’re not understanding your ego. If you’re not fighting against it you don’t understand, you’re underestimating your enemy. You know how dangerous it is to underestimate your enemy? And the ego, it is the most dangerous thing that Allah swt has ever created. It is the biggest enemy. If you don’t understand that, you cannot fight it. And our enemy, it is very tricky, hundreds and thousands of tricks and traps of the ego. You think you finish from this part, but this part it is coming. You think ‘I’m no longer arrogant,’ but laziness comes in. You think ‘I’m no longer lazy,’ but arrogance is there. How are you going to learn all of this? All these things, it’s not something that you are going to read and you’re just going to think, okay, that’s it, and then you are going to watch some stupid video on YouTube. This kind of training, it has to be; people are sick, and you understand that if you have a very severe sickness and you have to be in the hospital, you cannot be outside of the hospital.

If you’re in the hospital, they are going to hook you up to machines twenty four hours. Any change in the situation, there are people who are going to watch that. You can disconnect, but you are not going to get well. You can say ‘I don’t want to be in this hospital, I’m going to be outside.’ You can, but you are going to get more sick. So you need to be in the company. This is how you need to be. You are not in the company. You say ‘I cannot. Life is like this or like that.’ You think Allah, the One who put you in that kind of situation that we say is difficult, Allah never puts us in difficult situations. You think Allah also will not put us into easy situations? If the intention is correct and it is strong enough, He will open the door. But so many people, they are blind. They don’t understand Allah is opening the door too. That is a door, it is a door. Rush, when the door is opening, run to go in. insya’Allah, may this door never close to us. We are very weak, we are very dirty creatures, you and me. And we make mistakes all the time. But may Allah never separate us from our Sheykh and his Jamaat. This is what our Tarikat is based on: association. This is the meaning of the association.

Insya’Allah, in this Holy Month, we want to be in an association where even if we are separated from everyone physically, they are still here in our heart because we’ve cleared our heart from any other thing and we’ve put that association there, we’ve put our Sheykh there. To do that, it takes some time though. It’s not just something that you can just snap your fingers and it’s going to happen. May Allah make it easy insya’Allah.Wa minallahu taufiq, Al Fatiha. Amin. Selam Aleykum wa Rahmatullah